I’m the first to admit that Bill Maher is an asshole. He’s a sexist jerk and a foolishly staunch libertarian, and yet I love him to death and feel lost and depressed every Friday night that his HBO show is on furlough — which it is right now, until August…
Last year, the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council threw a party for what would have been Frida Kahlo’s 100th birthday; the bash was so successful that CHAC decided to bring it back for an entire month. “Last year was mostly Frida,” notes CHAC director Crystal O’Brien, “but this year we’ve…
The heart of the Wild West apparently has some Francophile blood in it. That’s what the annual French Summer Soiree, put on by the Alliance Française de Denver would seem to indicate: How else to explain a frou-frou French party taking place in our very own cowtown? Held in the…
With their 1998 debut, the boys and girls of Nashville Pussy declared Let Them Eat Pussy. Seven years later, they’re still all about the muff. Their latest album, Get Some!, opens with the holler, “Well, all right, who wants some pussy?” The quartet’s two superhot, supercrass female members, guitarist Ruyter…
Sometimes it’s nice just to call a spade a spade. Low provides just that sort of truth in advertising, easily earning high marks in the “slowcore” hall of fame. Through nearly fifteen years and ten albums scattered across half a dozen labels, including major backing from Virgin subsidiary Vernon Yard,…
During “A Vivid View” — the 22nd annual Black Arts Festival, which starts today and runs through Sunday in City Park — visitors will lose themselves in a smorgasbord of pan-African creativity: song, dance, visual arts, crafts, pageantry, spoken word and soulful cuisine. Today, the Community Mural Project will complete…
Bonfils is one of the biggest names in the history of Denver; it belongs to the family who owned the Denver Post for many decades during the early to mid-twentieth century. And though she always said that she had lived in the shadow of her father, Frederick, Helen Bonfils –…
This week’s local designer, Sherry Hern, is similar to some of our other recent picks because she is fairly new to fashion (she’s only been designing for a year) and she uses familiar materials in unpredictable ways. Her designs, sold under the name Down Boy Down, also have the same…
It’s hard enough getting thrown into the heady world of international high fashion when you’re still a teenager. It’s even tougher when the dominant language of the fashion house where you’re working isn’t your native language but instead, say, Hungarian. Though 16-year-old Mercina Grace Tillemann-Dick, one of the many players…
The last few weeks of my life have been utter chaos. As we prepare to move, I’ve been packing, painting, speculating on the true state of our finances and, above all, stressing out. With most of our movies packed, there wasn’t much to do last night in our box-filled house…
Teen fashion correspondent Sarah Bolliger brings us the teen view of the latest summer fashion trends. Have you ever been reading something that made you think, ‘I wonder what the writer is like?’ I know I have. I always want to know more about the person who wrote what I…
I have always judged places by certain things. A doctor’s office gets kudos if they have good fashion magazines. I won’t go to a nightclub if the name is a one-syllable noun. And I have never had my hair cut at a salon with a title I didn’t approve of…
Kelli Modica, our local designer for this week, has only been in Denver for about seven months but she’s already created some impressive and original fashion with the help of The Other Side Arts complex, which we mentioned in this profile of designer Jonathan Applegate. Kelli’s designs for her lable,…
Last week, we here at Westword took a cue from MTV and threw a big bash celebrating Denver’s local music scene, complete with a music awards ceremony honoring the best of Denver’s best. To be honest, I don’t really remember a whole helluva lot about it because when the people…
Let’s get one thing straight: American Girl — the inspiration for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the just-released movie starring Abigail Breslin — is a product. It’s a company. It’s a money-making enterprise. It’s owned by Mattel now. That alone speaks volumes. What it’s not is the sum total of…
I have spent much of the past week researching 1858 fashions for a Colorado Inside Out show that goes back in time, and as anyone who tunes in to KBDI: Channel 12 tonight at 8 p.m. will see, the results are not pretty (see above) Rumor has it that 150…
In a nation of frightened dullards, there is always a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome.” So wrote Hunter S. Thompson of the Hells Angels after riding with California’s motor-psycho Mongol hordes in the mid-1960s, a feat of embedded journalism that left…
The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis as a dead man, was M. Night Shyamalan’s breakthrough, but its followup, Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis as the walking dead reborn as a superhero, was the filmmaker’s masterpiece. It remains the most quietly influential of all recent superhero movies, the unacknowledged template for directors…
Macbeth is one of the most familiar of Shakespeare’s plays, and with each new production, I look to see what the director has accomplished in the way of re-interpretation, depth of understanding or clarification. For this Colorado Shakespeare Festival production, Lynne Collins has added a number of interpretive touches. Early…
Honus and Me. Adapted by playwright Steven Dietz from a young adult novel by Dan Gutman, Honus and Me tells the story of Joey, a young boy who’s passionate about baseball but too insecure and distracted to succeed as a player. He’s particularly troubled by his parents’ divorce. At his…
Painting is making its umpteenth comeback right now after having been declared dead an equal number of times over the years. The reason that paintings haven’t been supplanted permanently by videos, installations and the like is that artists refuse to cooperate. As a result, collectors and curators won’t let go,…
There are a bunch of shows at Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173, www.edgeart.org) that link up with one another pretty well. The buzz, however, has zeroed in on the most ambitious of the group: Timmy Flynn’s Hardware Store, which occupies the front gallery. The show, Flynn’s homage to a…
